Khalil said in a declaration filed in Manhattan federal court that while he was held overnight at a detention center in New Jersey, “I did not hear anyone mention bedbugs.”

A Palestinian student activist, who was detained by US immigration officers earlier this month, has spoken out for the first time about his arrest. In a letter dictated over the phone to his family from an ICE detention facility in Louisiana,

The night federal agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil on Columbia University's campus, the Palestinian activist feared he would be immediately deported, according to a sworn declaration included in a new court filing by his attorneys.

Mahmoud Khalil’s case was transferred to New Jersey on Wednesday by a federal judge in a compromise rejecting the pro-Palestinian activist’s bid to keep it in Manhattan and the Justice